But God

Well, if you have your Bible with you, I hope you do. We're in Ephesians chapter 2
this morning as we continue our study through the book of Ephesians, but I want to
start by reminding you of one of the less familiar Old Testament stories that it's
important for us to remember. This is not as big a story as the Burning Bush or
David and Goliath or Noah and the Ark, but this is something that happened during
the history of the nation of Israel in 701 BC during the reign of King Hezekiah in
the southern kingdom of Judah or Judea. There was an attempted siege on the city of
Jerusalem that took place during that time. Let me give you a little context for
this. You know that after King Solomon's reign, the nation of Israel split into the
northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. In fact, this is what it looks like on
the map we can see. So the Northern Kingdom is up here, 10 tribes of Israel with
the capital of the Northern Kingdom in Samaria, and then two tribes of Israel,
the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin were in the south. Jerusalem was its
capital, and these two nations were divided. They were friendly with one another, but
they were not on the same page. And that's why we get instances like Jesus with
the woman at the well in Samaria and she says our fathers say we should worship
here your people say we should worship there where are we supposed to do this so
they were they thought differently about things well the northern kingdom was actually
conquered in 721 bc so forces from the north from above the northern kingdom from
assyria the assyrians came in and they attacked the Northern Kingdom, they conquered
them, and that was the end. The Northern Kingdom became a vassal state of Assyria
and continued to live under their authority for that time.
And 20 years later, 20 years after the Northern Kingdom was captured, the King of
Assyria, whose name was Sinakarib, decided that he was going to lead his armies
through the Northern Kingdom down and launch an attack on the capital city of the
Southern Kingdom, Jerusalem. His goal was to capture the Southern Kingdom as well.
He wanted to expand his kingdom and his reign. So he brought his forces tens of
thousands of soldiers from Assyria through the Northern Kingdom and along the way
they would conquer small towns, small communities. I mean, here are tens of thousands
of soldiers coming into a community. they would pretty much take it over.
built tunnels so that water could still get into the city even when it was under
siege. And if you ever go to Jerusalem, you can walk through Hezekiah's tunnels and
walk through the water channels that are there. They're still there today. But
Sinakurib have the city surrounded with tens of thousands of troops. They were
cutting off supplies, waiting for Jerusalem to weaken. You know, people don't get
food. They don't get water. They weaken. And either surrender or become so weak that
you can just attack.
we're going to take you down, you might as well surrender. And Hezekiah got that
note, and he was surrounded, and he was out of options. And he tore his garments,
and he went to the temple, and he cried out to God. And he said, we have no hope
except for you. We don't have any hope for any, there's nothing left for us to do.
And God heard that prayer. And The next day, when Sinakurab woke up outside the
city of Jerusalem, 184 ,000 of his troops were dead.
One night, 184 ,000 troops died. And Sinakurib got the message and packed up and
went home. And Jerusalem survived.
When all hope was gone, when all options were gone, God intervened and saved his
people. And that story, the story of God intervening when all hope is gone,
is a familiar Old Testament story. Think about Jonah in the whale. Think about
Daniel going into a lion's den. What hope does he have against the lions?
He has no hope except for God. Think about the three Hebrew children going into the
fiery furnace. What hope do they have against the furnace? They have no hope but
God. God delivered Daniel and God delivered the three children.
Think about Jonah being tossed overboard into the Mediterranean and then swallowed by
a big fish. What hope does he have for survival except for God.
And in the belly of the big fish, Jonah prays a prayer, and he ends it by saying
salvation belongs to the Lord. He's acknowledging. The only way I'm going to get
saved is if God intervenes. Now, the reason that I wanted to recount those Old
Testament stories of rescue and deliverance is because the passage we're looking at
in Ephesians chapter 2 is a passage that talks about God delivering those who have
no hope and who are out of options. Last week we looked at the first three verses
in Ephesians chapter 2, which describe our spiritual condition before we know Christ.
And what is our spiritual condition? We're dead in our trespasses and sins. We are
enslaved by our own passions and by the culture in which we live under the rule of
the evil one and we are condemned as children of wrath and we have no hope there's
nothing we can do to fix our situation spiritually condemned spiritually enslaved
spiritually dead and when you get to the end of verse 3 in Ephesians 2 Paul,
the spiritual physician, is basically saying, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do
for you. You're out of options. There's nothing left. But verse four is where that
changes. All of that makes it more glorious when you read verse four, when you
read, there's nothing that we can do for you but God.
Those two words, Martin Lloyd -Jones says, in and of themselves, in a sense, contain
the whole of the gospel, but God. John Stott says,
those two monosyllables set side by side two truths, the desperate condition of
fallen humanity and the glorious initiative and sovereignty of God. And Rick Phillips
says these are the two greatest words in the Bible, on which we must rest for
salvation, but God. Our spiritual condition was hopeless. We had no options left,
but God. Let's look at this passage and see what it tells us about God's gracious
initiative in our lives as Christians. Before we do that again, let's pray. Father,
we need you now to come and be our teacher. We need you, Holy Spirit,
to open our hearts, to hear your truth. All is vain unless you come.
Lord, would you soften our hearts? Help us to hear your voice this morning through
your word. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
Let's read Ephesians 2. We're going to read verses 1 through 10 again to set the
text we're going to look at in context. This is the word of God for the people of
God. Ephesians 2 beginning at verse 1. And you were dead in the trespasses and
sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in
the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our
flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind and were by nature
children of wrath like the rest of mankind but god being rich in mercy because of
the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses
made us alive together with christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up
with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, so that
in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing, it's the gift of God, not a result of works so
that no one may boast, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Amen.
May God bless this reading of his word, the grass withers and the flower fades. The
word of our God will stand forever. Now the four verses we're going to look at
this morning, verses four through seven, address two primary themes.
They tell us first what God has done for us in Christ and then they tell us why
God has done what he's done. Simple outline that we'll follow this morning. What is
he done and why has he done it? We'll look at the first of these verses to tell
us what God has done. Three things that the passage tells us that God has done for
us. First of all, he made us alive in Christ. Secondly, he raised us up with him,
and third, he has seated us with him in the heavenly places. And these three
things, this all takes you back to chapter one. These are the same things that God
wants our hearts to be enlightened to see that he did for Jesus.
Look back at chapter one, in fact, turn back there. Think back to what Kendall and
Trey taught when they took us through this passage. In verse 17 of chapter 1,
it says, the Lord of our God, excuse me, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of Glory, praying that he may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation
and the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may
know the hope with which he's called you, the riches of the glorious inheritance in
the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,
according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he
raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.
Now, many of you are familiar with the Apostles' Creed. I grew up in a church
where every Sunday we recited the Apostles' Creed as our catechism. And in part,
it says that we believe that Jesus was crucified, dead and buried,
that on the third day he ascended, the third day he rose again from the dead, he
ascended into heaven, that he is now seated at the right hand of God, the Father
Almighty, and that from thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.
So you're familiar with these words. Again, it's that progression of raised from
death, ascended to heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father. That's what God
did in Christ, and the passage we're looking at is telling us in Ephesians 2 that
what we experience because we are in Christ is the same resurrection,
ascension, and seating. God is putting his power on display by raising Christ from
the dead, and by lifting him up, and by seating him in heaven and places,
and God is putting his grace on display by doing the same with you, for you,
because you are in Christ. So because Christ has been raised, ascended, and seated,
all who are in Christ have been raised spiritually, from spiritual death to spiritual
life, have been ascended or transferred, if you will, you have a new home,
a new address, you've gone from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his
glorious son. And, as amazing as this sounds, we have been given the privilege of
being seated with him, ruling and reigning together with him in the new kingdom. All
three of these phrases are in what is called the aorist tense of the verb,
which means that they've already happened, but they have a continuing effect. These
things have already, they're already true about you with continuing effect. It's an
unfolding thing for those who are in Christ. And I want to take each of these
three statements apart and look at them point by point. First of all, we have been
made alive in Him. That's what verse 5 says. You were dead.
You were alienated from God. You didn't care about him. You didn't care about
bringing glory to him. You cared about you and you cared about your glory.
And verse 5 says, God made you alive together with Christ.
He removed from you the heart of stone which kept you dead and he gave you a
heart of flesh which brings you to new life. In fact, I love the image of this
that we find in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. If you have your Bible, turn to
Ezekiel. So Ezekiel is back, about 60 % of the way through the Bible.
After Jeremiah get to Ezekiel, turn to chapter 37 with me.
And I want you to see what happens when Ezekiel is given the vision in the valley
of dry bones. Here's what the passage says.
It says that verse 1, the hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out in
the spirit of the Lord and sent me down in the middle of the valley and it was
full of dry bones. Now just stop there. Dry bones. If you came across dry bones,
what would you know about those dry bones? Somebody's been dead for a long time. If
they're dry bones, they've been dead for a long time. There's no life left in those
bones. They're dead, dry bones, and there's never going to be life in them again.
Verse two says, he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on
the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, son
of man, can these bones live? And I answered, oh, Lord God, you know. Then he said
to me, prophesy over these bones,
do. Verse 5. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to
enter you and you shall live and I will lay sinew on you and I will cause flesh
to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live
and you shall know that I am the Lord. So Ezekiel says I prophesied as I was
commanded and as I prophesied there was a sound and behold a rattling and the bones
came together bone to its bone and I looked and behold there were sinews on them
and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them but there was no breath in
them then he said to me prophesied to the breath prophesies son of man and say to
the breath thus says the Lord God come from the four winds O breath and breathe on
these slain that they may live so I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath
came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet an exceeding great army. I
love that vision, that picture. You can imagine what Ezekiel experienced as they
stood there looking at that valley of dry bones and saw life come to those dead
bones. That's the same picture that we're seeing in Ephesians chapter 2.
We were dead. We were like those dead, dry bones. No hope for life in us.
But God made us alive even though we were dead. Let me ask you the question.
What role did you play in you being made spiritually alive? It's like what role did
you play in your new birth? Well, what role did you play when you were born?
You just came out. That's the only thing you did to be born. Your mom did all of
the work, okay? You just came out. What role did you play in coming from spiritual
death to spiritual life? You just open your eyes. You just came alive.
You just responded to what God was doing. God is the one who gives spiritual life.
He's the one who gives us an appetite for his word. He's the one who gives us a
desire to live a life that is pleasing to him. He's the one who gives us peace in
the middle of difficult circumstances. He's the one who gives us hope in hopeless
situations. He's the one who gives us joy when there's no reason for joy in our
circumstances. The resurrection of Jesus, Ian Hamilton says, is not something that we
believe in. It's something we participate in. That's an important distinction.
You can believe in the resurrection of Jesus. That doesn't do you any good. You
have to participate in it. It's not just believing that he was raised, it's being
raised with him that matters. This is something we share. What does that mean for
us? We were once dead and alienated from God, now we are alive in Him.
What does that mean? Well, Here's what I think is the most significant part of what
this means. When you were dead, you were in your trespasses and sins. Your
trespasses and sins were your identity. They're who you were. They defined your life.
Now, God has made you alive together with Christ, in Christ. You have a new
identity. Your trespasses and sins are no longer your identity. now are they still a
part of your past yes do they still do they hang around yes but they don't define
you they're not who you are in fact god has taken them and removed them as far as
the east is from the west he's put them behind his back he's put them at the
bottom of the sea god says i don't remember them anymore about your sin he has
erased your sin if you are in Christ. Your trespasses and sins in what you once
walked and lived are no longer your identity. You are now in Him.
Your identity is with Him. When you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
you had no access to God. And you didn't care, one way or another.
But together with Christ, you have full access to God. You can come into his
presence without fear or without shame.
You can delight to be together with him. You know,
there are certain people we refer to as the life of the party, you know, the
person who comes into a room and everybody kind of lights up and the party gets
going because they just bring with them. They bring life to the party. Everybody was
sitting around doing nothing and kind of bored, and then this person shows up, and
now the party gets started. I'm not saying that Jesus is the life of the party,
but I'm saying that when he comes, he brings life. You come alive in him.
Martin Lloyd -Jones says it this way. He says, God, by his mighty action,
puts a new disposition into my soul. There's a new governing principle that is made
alive at the very center of our being. That's what it means to be alive in Christ.
God puts a new disposition in your soul. There's a new governing principle that's at
the very center of your being. You're a new creation, you have new priorities. You
now love learning from God's word. You love worshiping together with God's people,
with your brothers and sisters in him. You love other people in a way that you
didn't before. You're able to fight back against sin in a way that you weren't able
to fight back before. You were dead, now you're alive.
And not only that, but you were once enslaved to sin. That's what we saw in
Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 3. You were enslaved to your passions,
and God has raised you up from that. In fact, That's what verse 6 says. You have
been raised up with him. You've had a change of address. You used to live in the
domain of darkness where you were enslaved by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
When Christ ascended to heaven, you went with him. You were raised up with him.
You are in him. You're united with him. So when he was brought into the heavenly
kingdom, you were too. Now, are you living in heaven today? Has this already
happened to you? Well, the answer to that question is what's known as the already
and not yet. You probably heard that statement before, but in the Bible,
there's a lot that we read where it's the already and the not yet, where things
have happened in part but not fully. So has our king come to us?
Yes.
It's the already, but it's the not yet. Is he coming again in fullness? Yes. Are
you living in heaven today? In a sense, you are because you're living under the
domain of the king. You're living in the heavenly kingdom. You used to live under
the tyranny of your sinful desires. Romans 6 says sin used to reign in your mortal
body and made you obey its passions. But you have a new king who has set you free
from the law of sin and death. Because of him, you're able to throw off the yoke
of slavery that sin brought. Sin and death no longer own you. By the power of God,
you've been made free. You have been raised above all earthly powers.
Before we lived here in Arkansas, we lived in Texas. We moved in 1992 from San
Antonio to Little Rock. And when we moved, we didn't just change address, we changed
jurisdiction. So in 1993, if the state of Texas sent me a note and said,
You owe a state income taxes. I could tear that up. I was no longer under the
threat of the state of Texas for anything that they had no jurisdiction over me.
I was no longer a citizen of that state. I was now a citizen of the state of
Arkansas. So I don't have to obey the laws of Texas because I don't live there
anymore. Now, if I'm there, I'd have to obey them. Here in Arkansas, you don't know
if to obey the laws of Texas. We're in a new jurisdiction. Paul's telling us in
Ephesians too that when we were raised up with Christ, we were brought to a new
jurisdiction. You have a new pledge of allegiance to a new king. You live under
this new jurisdiction, and you report to him. Again, there's an already not yet
aspect of this. We're living today in part what we will one day live out fully.
That's why Jesus said, when he came, he said, the kingdom of God is among you, but
it had not come yet in its fullness. And that's why we pray, thy kingdom come. Thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We've been made alive with him. We've
been raised up with him. And then the third thing, and this is the most mind
-blowing thing that I think God's done for us, we have been seated with him in the
heavenly places, according to verse 6. You've moved from this side of the judicial
bench to sit on the bench.
Before you were in Christ, you stood before the judge condemned because of your sin.
You deserved the wrath and the punishment that would be handed out. Now, in Christ,
you are now seated alongside him on the other side of the judicial bench. You are
no longer condemned, you are now aligned with him to help carry out justice on the
earth. The writer of Hebrews talks about Jesus sitting down at the right hand of
God. In Hebrews 1 .3, you've probably read this. After making purification for sins,
he sat down at the right hand.
and he is now ruling on his throne. And we are seated alongside him,
with him. His work on our behalf is finished. We are no longer sons of disobedience
or children of wrath.
I like how Rick Phillips points us out. He says there's more than being seated with
Christ, more to being seated with Christ than simply being forgiven. He says,
the opposite of condemnation and judgment is not just acquittal or forgiveness.
We aspire to too little if we think that forgiveness is all we want from God.
The opposite of condemnation is acceptance into God's inner circle,
adoption into his family, and embrace close to his side to be seated at his right
hand together with Christ. That's what it means that we've been seated together with
him. We're forgiven, but we're also accepted into the circle. Being seated with
Christ means that as an overcomer, you're not only accepted, but now you are ruling
and reigning with him. In the same way that in Genesis, God gave Adam and Eve the
dominion mandate to rule over creation under him. In the same way,
when we come to Christ, we're given a renewal of that mandate to subdue the earth,
to multiply and subdue the earth. Again, there's an already but a not yet factor to
that. What God has done for us in Christ is he's made us alive, he's raised us up
to live with him, and he has seated us alongside of him. And here's what all that
means. We are no longer, we no longer belong to this world. Our foundational
identity now is in Christ. We live here, but this world is not our home.
We're not of the world. We're no longer citizens in Satan's kingdom.
We're no longer subject to his jurisdiction. And here's the summary of these verses
from John Stott, who reflects on this passage and says, what constitutes the
distinctness of the members of God's new society? Not just that they admire or even
worship Jesus, not just that they assent to the dogmas of the church,
not even that they live by certain moral standards. No, what makes them distinctive
is their new solidarity as people who are in Christ. By virtue of their union with
Christ, they have actually shared in his resurrection, his ascension,
and his session.
Now, here's an interesting question as we think about, We were dead,
we were enslaved, we were condemned. God breaks all of that apart, and now he
raises us with him, we ascend with him, we're seated alongside of him. Here's the
interesting question. Why did God do this? Why did God do this for you? Why did
God do this for anybody? Why would God, as we sometimes sing in the hymn,
why would God make a wretch his pleasure.
Let me tell you the wrong answer first. God didn't make you alive and raise you up
and seat you with him because of something special about you.
God didn't save you because he finds you lovable. God did not save you because he's
lonely and wants fellowship. God did not save you because he saw something good in
you. This passage tells us why God bade us alive in Him,
lifted us up to be with Him, and seated us alongside Him. It's back in verse 4.
Why did God do this? He did this because He is rich in mercy.
This is one of his attributes. In fact, in Exodus 34, when Moses is for the second
time receiving the Ten Commandments, you remember he got him the first time, came
down, he broke the tablets because he was so mad at how the people had started
worshiping in the idol, then he goes back up on the mountain, he receives the Ten
Commandments again on stone, and God reveals himself, and here's what God says to
Moses about himself. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord,
the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger,
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the
guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's
children to the third and fourth generation. Here's who God says, I am to Moses.
I am merciful. I am gracious. I am slow to anger. I'm abounding in steadfast love
and faithfulness. I forgive iniquity without compromising justice. The blessings we're
looking at here this morning are ours, first of all, because God is a merciful God.
Because he does not treat us according to what our sins deserve.
That's what mercy is. God does not give us what we justly deserve.
Mercy is God showing love for the unlovely. And God,
according to the prophet Micah, God delights in showing mercy. He loves to show
mercy.
So the first reason that God has rescued us from our desperate condition is because
he's a merciful God, because he's rich in mercy. The second reason is because of
his great love for us. We see that in verse four. He saves us because of his love
with which he loved us, the great love with which he loved us, even when we were
dead in our trespasses and sins. Now, we could stop here and say a lot about the
love of God, and it would be profitable if we had time to do that because there's
a lot of misconception in a lot of people's minds today about what God's love is
and what it means. Don Carson points out that the love of God in our culture has
been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been
sanitized, democratized, and above all, sentimentalized. People think that God's love
means that however you want to live is fine, you can do whatever you want to do
to make you happy, that that's what a loving God would allow. It's ridiculous
because as parents, we know that just letting our kids do whatever they want to do
and make whatever choice they want. That's not a loving thing to do as a parent.
People think that God's love is some kind of sentimental fondness or affection, that
God looks down and says, oh, aren't you sweet, aren't you cute, and wants to cuddle
with you. People think that God is somehow obligated to demonstrate love equally to
all people. And they forget that there's a difference between the Israelites and the
Canaanites. They forget that Jacob, he loved, he saw,
he hated. People think that if God is love, then love must be God.
And they conflate things and think that as long as we demonstrate love,
sentimental love, we're being like God.
So what Paul has in mind here when he talks about the great love with which God
has loved us, he's talking about a particular kind of God's love, his effective,
selecting love toward his own. God sets his affection on those who he has chosen in
a way that he does not set his affection on all people.
We're familiar with the idea of different kinds of love. I love you.
I love my neighbor. I love my enemy. I love my wife. I don't love you all the
same. And it would be wrong if I did. That love is a different kind of love.
God loves the world. God loves his own. But he loves his own differently than he
loves the whole world. It's not that he doesn't love the world. God so loved the
world that he sent his only son, but he loves his own with a special kind of
love. And the love that Paul is talking about here in Ephesians 4, or excuse me,
Ephesians 2, this great love of God is that kind of special love that he has for
his own. And of course, when we think about this, the fact that God would love
some more than he loves others, the question always comes up, well, that doesn't
seem right, that doesn't seem fair, how can that be right? How can God love some
and not others? How does God decide who he's going to love? And the answer that
the Bible gives us is that it pleases him to love some of us and not to love
others. Now that's not a very satisfying answer because we want to know, yeah, but
why? Why does he love some and not others? And God has not chosen to share the
answer to that with us. He doesn't tell us why. Here's what we know.
We know the character of God. We know the goodness of God. We know that all his
ways are right and good. And if that's what he chooses to do, that's a good thing.
And the fact that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around that doesn't mean it's
not true. The bigger question is not why does God love some and not others.
The big question is why does God love anybody? Why does God look at any of these
wretches and say, I'm going to demonstrate self -sacrificing love for them?
But he does do that. And instead of being plagued by questions we'll never be able
to answer in this life, we should be grateful that God is a God of who is rich
in mercy and has great love for us. It's steadfast love. It's an everlasting love
for those who are in Him.
So he has saved some because he is rich in mercy, because of his great love for
us. And then the last reason is because it will put on display the immeasurable
riches of His grace. Him loving us puts the immeasurable riches of his grace on
display. Back in chapter one, we read about his immeasurable power being put on
display in the resurrection of Christ. Here in chapter two, the immeasurable grace of
God is put on display as he saves some. Grace, by the way,
is God's unmerited favor. If mercy means that God doesn't give you what you deserve.
Grace means that God does give you what you don't deserve. God's grace,
according to Packer, is his love demonstrated toward those who deserve the opposite.
God's grace is what he freely bestows when wrath is owed.
God's grace is love freely shown toward guilty sinners contrary to their merit and
indeed in defiance of their demerit.
If the story of the Bible was a story that God takes people who are mostly good
and makes them a little better, that wouldn't be anything to be marveling at.
That would make God a life coach or would make him a therapist you know he helps
you with gives you a little edge you're good but he makes you a little better but
the story of the Bible is that God takes hostile rebels who stubbornly persist in
their hostility toward him who have no desire for him at all and he overwhelms them
with his mercy and his love giving them what they don't deserve, life and liberation
from sin and a seat with him at the table, he gives us every spiritual blessing in
the heavenlies. Remember what chapter one says? He chooses us. He adopts us as his
sons. He redeems us. He forgives our sins. He empowers us with his spirit.
That's his overwhelming love. And verse 7 says, in Ephesians 2, he says he does
this to put his grace on display through you.
You know that for 150 years in New York City, on 34th Street,
the windows in front of Macy's department store at Christmas time have been made
special. Those windows have been decorated and dressed up, started back in the late
1800s and has continued every year and gotten more elaborate. There are people who
go to New York at Christmas time, and it's not New York at Christmas unless you
stroll down 34th Street, and you see the windows at Macy's, and you see the
elaborate work that's been done there. The reason the Macy Company puts so much
time, effort, and money into those display windows is not because they want to
attract window shoppers. It's not there so that you will look at those, isn't that
nice. No, they want to put those display windows there so you will see them and
you'll come into the store. You'll come buy what's on display in the window. You
look and go, ooh, I want one of those, and you find your way into the store. You
and I have been made the display windows for God's grace. We are to put the grace
of God on display in our lives so that when people see us, they go, oh, I want
that.
I want some of that.
John Stott tells the story about when he was a student at Ridley Hall in Cambridge,
there was a professor there, Paul Gibson, who was the principal,
and he was retiring. And to commemorate his service as principal, the school
commissioned a portrait of him. It was an oil painting that's still on display in
the college today. In fact, I think, do we have that oil painting of Paul Gibson?
Yes, this is what the painting looks like at Cambridge Hall. When the painting was
finished and was presented, the retiring Dr. Gibson said, people who see this
painting in the future will not ask the question, who is that man? They will asked
the question, who painted that portrait?
That's what ought to be true of our lives. People should see us and say, how do
you have the peace you have? How do you keep your cool when everybody else is
freaking out? Where does your joy come from? How can you be so patient with these
people?
How do you love these people? How can you be so kind to others? And your answer
is, by the grace of God, not because of anything in me. You were dead,
you were enslaved, you were condemned, but because you're in Christ, what God has
done for you in Christ is the same thing he did for Jesus. He brought Christ from
death to life, he brings you from spiritual death to life. He raised Christ up in
the ascension. He has raised you up to be with him. He seated Christ at his right
hand. He has seated you alongside him for the fellowship and for the authority that
that brings. You have a new identity, you have a new home address, you have new
priorities for your life if you are in Christ. Now I keep saying it's all if you
are in Christ because he has not done this for everybody. I'm assuming that most of
you here on a church on Sunday morning are in Christ. That's why he came to
church. There may be some of you here who came to church because somebody dragged
you to church.
It's the holidays and you came with a relative or a friend and you're hearing all
of this and going, this sounds lovely, but you're not in Christ.
If that's the case, then these blessings that Paul's describing here don't belong to
you, but they can belong to you.
Because Christ is opening the door to call you out of darkness into light. He's
saying, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. I'll give you rest. The
blessings that are being described here can be yours. You just have to surrender and
follow Christ. You just have to give up yourself,
take yourself from the center of your life, move it to the side, put Jesus at the
center of your life, and live for him.
I'm going to end this morning with a final observation from Rick Phillips, a good
reminder for us as we wrap up this study of these verses. Rick Phillips says the
purpose of our salvation is not to take all our troubles away, but to give us the
opportunity in the midst of so many and great trials to glorify God in the world.
If you're thinking, I want to be a Christian so all my troubles go away, that's
not how it works.
You want to be a Christian so that in the midst of your trials and troubles, you
can glorify God.
You can show the surpassing greatness of his power in you. You can put His grace
on display for others.
And given all that Christ has done for us, it seems reasonable to me that we
should put his agenda at the center of our lives, right? Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for this passage. Thank you for what you have done for us in
Christ. It's hard for us to even comprehend the idea that what you did for Christ
you've also done for us, that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is a power
that lives in us, that the fellowship that Jesus enjoys as a part of the Trinity
is a fellowship that we are brought into, that to be in Christ is to have the
eternal spiritual blessings of heaven brought to bear in our lives.
We worship you and we thank you and we acknowledge that it's not because of any
goodness or righteousness in us, but it's because of your grace. Lord,
I pray this morning for any who might be here who are not in you,
who have not surrendered their lives to you. I pray that they would reflect on what
they've heard and that your spirit might stir in them, a longing, a desire to want
to draw near to you to experience the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ.
I pray that you would draw them to yourself, that you would bring them to spiritual
life, and that they would know the joy that comes from knowing you.
I ask all of these things in your name. Amen.